Drinkers

Men who drink heavily are four times more likely than non-drinkers to have a stroke, but light drinking appears to reduce the risk, British researchers said Wednesday.''If you're a teetotaler your risk of a stroke is twice that of a light drinker,'' said Dr. Jaswinder Gill, who conducted a new study at the Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham, England. ''But heavy drinkers increase their risk.''The study found a strong association between consuming 30 or more drinks a week and all types of strokes for men, even after accounting for whether they had high blood pressure or smoked.

If you drink and drive this Labor Day weekend in Orange County, there's a chance that roving law-enforcement DUI patrols will catch you. The Sheriff's Office and police agencies are planning beefed up enforcement for the next month on Friday and Saturday nights, starting tomorrow. They'll also staff a DUI checkpoint at Evans High School in Pine Hills Friday night from 8 until Saturday at 4 a.m. About five dozen cops will be out looking for drivers whose blood alcohol is over the legal limit.

When people call New Year's Eve ''amateur night,'' they aren't referring to a talent contest at a local comedy club.They mean it's a night when even non-drinkers drink, and even light drinkers get drunk. They mean it's a night to take to the road only in a Mack truck or a tank.It's also a night to consider whether booze is merely lubricating the laughter at New Year's Eve celebrations -- or whether it has become the raison de party for some in your crowd.New Year's Eve, along with St. Patrick's Day, weddings, Thanksgiving and other good-time, booze-swilling occasions, offers infrequent overdrinkers the perfect excuse to get drunk.

Heavy drinkers who consume three or more servings of alcohol per day are at increased risk of a type of stroke called an intracerebral hemorrhage — and they're more likely to have that stroke at an earlier age than patients who don't drink, scientists reported Monday. Writing in the journal Neurology , researchers from the University of Lille Nord de France reported that on average, heavy drinkers were afflicted with intracerebral hemorrhage — which is caused by bleeding in the brain and has a more dire prognosis than more-common ischemic strokes , which are caused by clots in blood vessels — 14 years earlier than people who were not heavy drinkers. People who drank a lot also were more likely to have a stroke deep in the brain, wrote neurologist Dr. Charlotte Cordonnier and colleagues.

The University of Michigan Medical Center is offering a new program to help mild to moderate drinkers control their consumption. Called DrinkWise, the brief intervention program teaches drinkers who are considered at risk for developing serious problems how to drink more responsibly. The program helps participants identify why they drink, offers them alternatives to drinking and teaches them how to pace themselves when they do drink. The program costs $520 for four hourlong one-on-one sessions with a counselor.

For As Long As People Have Missed Work Because Of A Hangover, Died Prematurely Of Liver Disease Or Crashed Their Cars While Drunk, Health-policy Experts Have Argued About How Best To Control The Drinkers Who Regularly And Dangerously Abuse Alcohol.Now, as a result of congressional passage last year of the largest increase in federal beer, wine and liquor taxes since 1951, one of the more controversial of those theories will be put to the test: Does raising the price of alcohol reduce alcohol abuse?

A study of hard-core drunken drivers - repeat offenders whose blood-alcohol levels were twice that allowed by law - has found that such people may drive under the influence more than 1,000 times before they are caught.John C. Lawn, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Century Council, an anti-drunken-driving group funded by leading distilleries, said the finding, although disturbing, was not a surprise to police or offenders.``We found that the hard-core offender drives drunk for years, has heard all the warnings and just ignores them,'' said Lawn, a former administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

LONDON - Hoping to cut down on binge drinking and pub brawls, the British government proposed a novel idea Monday: Allow bars to stay open 24 hours a day. Scrapping the mandatory 11 p.m. closing time was the centerpiece of plans to liberalize and streamline licensing laws that were inspired by fears of munitions workers' getting drunk during World War I. ``Fixed closing times encourage binge drinking around last orders,'' Home Secretary Jack Straw told...

There was a time when wine was merely an afterthought for the average U.S. drinker. Something to be had at stuffy formal affairs. Something that said "elite." That was before wine became more affordable and more plentiful. Before experts began touting its health benefits. And before it played a key role in the 2004 hit movie Sideways. Now the pressure is on everyone -- from grape growers to wineries to wholesalers to retailers -- to meet the increased demand by consumers in America, considered one of the world's top growth markets.

Austrian wine drinkers, rocked by revelations of wine-doctoring this summer, faced another shock this week when it was announced that prices for everyday wines would triple next year. Blamed: A bad harvest.

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times and This post has been corrected, as indicated below., May 16, 2012

Researchers have some reassuring news for the legions of coffee drinkers who can't get through the day without a latte, cappuccino, iced mocha, double-shot of espresso or a plain old cuppa joe: That coffee habit may help you live longer. A new study that tracked the health and coffee consumption of more than 400,000 older adults for nearly 14 years found that java drinkers were less likely to die during the study than their counterparts who eschewed the brew. In fact, men and women who averaged four or five cups of coffee per day had the lowest risk of death, according to a report in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Ocoee police offered to let Francisco Laborica-Granados sleep in his own bed on Friday night, an arrest report states, but the intoxicated man chose jail instead — and talked his way into an arrest on felony charges. Officers working at El Tequila Sunrise, a bar on Silver Star Road, confronted Laborica-Granados, 19, about 12:35 a.m. Saturday, the reports says, after they saw him accept a beer from a bartender. The officers knew he wasn't old enough to drink, which an identification card confirmed.

Drinking has been a rite of passage for college students for generations. Too often, though, they don't know their own limits. They drink too much. Some get seriously ill. Some die. In the past, colleges have tried to deal with the problem by taking a punitive approach, especially when it came to underage drinking. But in recent years, they've started focusing more on making sure intoxicated kids get the medical help they need. One by one, higher-education institutions nationwide are offering "medical-amnesty" or "alcohol-emergency" policies that shield students from punishment if they seek help while they or someone they're helping is drunk.

SANFORD — An Oviedo High student who got drunk at his teacher's home, climbed behind the wheel of her SUV and crashed into two vehicles is now suing the Seminole County School Board. Dylan Ferguson, 19, alleges the teacher, Meredith Witt, plied him with alcohol because she was romantically interested in his friend, another Oviedo High student. Witt, 34, resigned within days of the Nov. 2, 2009, crash. She also was ordered to spend 30 days in jail after she pleaded no contest to giving alcohol to four teenagers, including Ferguson and another of her students.

A Leesburg woman faces a charge of allowing minors to consume alcohol at an open house party after Volusia County deputy sheriffs discovered "several" people at her uncle's home near Port Orange were under age. Brittany Anne Bauer, 21, was arrested Sunday evening at the home on Toronita Avenue, according to an arrest affidavit. Deputies said they responded to a disturbance involving Bauer and two males and after they resolved that issue they discovered the underage party-goers at the home.

A brother and sister who are students at Valencia Community College were arrested Sunday after University of Central Florida police busted what they said was an underage-drinking party at their apartment near UCF. Cristina Duncan, 19, and her brother, Morgan Duncan, 20, of Steubenville, Ohio, each was arrested on a charge of throwing an open house party, police said Tuesday. They share an apartment on Knights Krossing Circle in the Pegasus Landing apartments. The complex was affiliated with the University of Central Florida until last year, when mold problems caused the university to disassociate itself.

MILWAUKEE -- Would that crisp Chardonnay or cool refreshing lager go down as guiltlessly if you knew that every sip contributed, imperceptibly, to the shrinkage of your brain? A new study has found that over time, drinking alcohol, whether moderately or heavily, was associated with decreased brain volume. And while heavy drinkers had significantly less brain volume than light or moderate drinkers, only abstainers were found to have no alcohol-related brain atrophy. The effect was the greatest in women.

Seals along the northern Atlantic coast don't pay much attention to boats anymore. But kayaks still terrorize them. Nobody knows why. Maybe they remember in their genes the look of great killer fish. Or ancient Indian hunters. Your turn to theorize.There are those who claim Isaac Newton was the most intelligent man in history. He didn't talk much. When he was in Parliament, according to the record, the only thing he ever said was, ''Will somebody open the window, please?'' Or words to that effect.

Drinking a cup or two of milk a day might help overweight dieters lose even more weight. In a new study, dieters who consumed milk or milk products lost more weight on average than those who did not. Researchers in Israel placed more than 300 overweight men and women ages 40 to 65 on either a low-fat, low-carb or Mediterranean diet for two years. Regardless of meal plan, dieters who drank 12 ounces (a cup and a half) of milk each day lost 12 pounds at the end of two years, compared to only 7 pounds for dieters who drank less than half a cup of milk per day, according to their research published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Drinking a cup or two of milk a day might help overweight dieters lose even more weight. In a newly released study, dieters who consumed milk or milk products lost more weight on average than those who did not. Researchers in Israel placed more than 300 overweight men and women between 40 and 65 years old on either low-fat, low-carb, or Mediterranean diets for two years. Regardless of meal plan, dieters who drank 12 ounces (a cup and a half) of milk each day lost 12 pounds at the end of two years, compared to only 7 pounds that dieters lost who drank less than half a cup of milk per day, the researchers publish today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.